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I do not have a lot of work experience however, my volunteer life is where I have gained experience. SO I don’t put my interests (reading, knitting, scrapbooking) but I put my volunteer experience that is relevant to the position I am applying for (for example, I volunteer as an instructor/trainer for girl guides and that gives me experience in public speaking/presenting and facilitating, things I want to do in a career but do not have the experience in that yet).

I see this a lot so I know it’s done. I’m not in Law, though, so that may be the difference? It doesn’t bother me as long as it’s brief. Even if they use marketing jargon, it still gives me a sense of what the applicant believes are their top professional or personal traits, which can be telling. It’s like the classic interview question, “describe yourself in three words” (or some iteration of that). The cover letter, on the other hand, is how their skills and experience will align with my organization and the position.

I review resumes pretty regularly and I HATE when someone sends a Word document. Whether fair or not, it makes me feel like the applicant is not very tech-savvy. Even when the format stays as the applicant intended (which it seldom does), I always use the Show/Hide formatting button and can often see that s/he made the resume “look” good but is not a very adept/efficient Word user. In fairness, my organization does not use automated software but I haven’t heard of problems with resume scanning software and PDFs as long as OCR is applied.

Another big turn-off is people who describe themselves as “detail-oriented” but have an error in their resume. I am much less forgiving of an error when the applicant has listed “attention to detail” as one of their selling points. Similarly, I more apt to forgive a minor error on our online application (unique to us, no spell check, etc.) than I am to overlook an error on your resume or cover letter, which you’ve had time to prep, check and have others review.